The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 439: General Stanley McChrystal - A New Way To Understand Risk & Master The Unknown

Episode Date: October 3, 2021

Text LEARNERS to 44222 for more... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 General Stanley McChrystal retired in July 2010 as a four-star general in the U.S. Army. His last assignment was as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force and as the commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He had previously served as the director of the Joint Staff and as the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command. The author of My Share of the Task, Team of Teams, and Leaders, he is currently a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and the co-founder of the McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting firm. Notes: Stan's mentor for his military career and still to this day: an Army officer with a thick southern accent, Major John Vines. His advice: "If there are 3 people responsible for feeding the dog, the dog is going to starve." Stan graduated from West Point 31 years after his father did. Major General George Smith Patton (General George Patton's son) handed him his diploma. Stan wondered at that moment, what kind of leader you wanted to be. And he came up with, "a good one." Now the more fundamental question is "What do good leaders do?" Instead of just being a good leader, Stan desires to be an effective leader. Effective leaders: Tactically competent Are morally good Respected They create an environment where others want to follow They shape how people think and behave People that others want to follow Have high standards Risk: in reality, risk is neither mathematical nor finite. Its impact depends to a great extent on how we perceive, process, and respond. A healthy risk immune system successfully executes 4 imperatives: Detect, Assess, Respond, and Learn "Risk comes at you from out of the blue, from every angle, when least convenient. There is a cost in becoming overly focused on risk and another at ignoring them. And the sweet spot between the two extremes moves with the circumstances around you." "I chose a soldier's life for many reasons, one of which was the desire to perceive myself as a courageous risk taker. I liked the idea of taking risks that others would not." Threat x Vulnerability = Risk Risk is an eternal challenge. But trying to anticipate or predict every possible risk is a fool's errand. The key is to understand how we need to think about risk, and to then respond appropriately. Rather than living in dread of things we often can't anticipate, duck, or dodge – we must remember these five key insights. Look Inward: The greatest risk to us is us. It's Up to Us: We have a risk immune system Be holistic: It's the system. Make it work Balance: The muscles you exercise will be strong: those you ignore will be vulnerabilities Risk is always with us, and it's our responsibility to make our teams ready for it When taking command of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, Stan, along with the leaders of the unit, established The foundational skills - They called them the big 4: Physical conditioning Marksmanship Medical Skills Small Unit Drills But even before mastering basic skills, grounding both individuals and organizations with answers to the most basic questions that relate to the narrative is essential: What are our values? What exactly do we do? And why do we do it? What is expected of each of us? What went wrong with our response to COVID-19? 50 states operated separately instead of a united response "We weren't unified" "Our leaders did not communicate effectively." "You have to act before the population sees the requirement for it." Have a front-line obsession - Stan was known for going on the front lines with his soldiers. As leaders, we should do the same with our teams. Be on the front lines to: See how it's done with your own eyes, not just reports They need to see you go. They'll appreciate it It helps create your self-identity The new hybrid model of in-office and at-home working... Be intentional Use technology Understand what you're not doing Don't get lazy How to deal with imposter syndrome? Ask, "What do I know?" "What's my responsibility?" "You have to fight that crisis of confidence." Excellence = Be less flexible on your basic values Be flexible with how a problem gets solved

I would say that you really got to fight imposter syndrome because it's a crisis of confidence. And sometimes it can make you less effective than you actually are. As you sit there and you see it and you wonder, wow, should I even be in this room? Is my opinion worthy? And you got to step back and say, what do I know and what's my responsibility? Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here.

Text learners to 4422 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your WeGolf right. You'll also receive details about by new upcoming book, which comes out in January, and you'll have the opportunity to read it first. Text, learners to 4-4-222. Now, on to tonight's feature leader, the legend. It's General Stanley McChrystal retired, four-star general. He was in the United States Army. His last assignment was as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force and as the commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He had previously served

as the commander of the Joint Special Operations Committee. Stan is also the author of multiple bestselling books, including My Share of the Task, Team of Teams, Leaders, and most recently, Risk. He is currently a senior fellow at Yale and Stan is the co-founder of the McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting firm during this conversation. We talk about.

Stan's definition of the five, five qualities of an effective leader. And then how to develop a healthy risk immune system, both for yourself and your team. And then he shares the first things you should do when taking over a new team. This was wide-ranging. We covered a lot. It was fantastic.

Ladies and gentlemen, the legendary General Stanley McChrystal. All right, General Stanley McChrystal. Man, at first I just got to say, it's just so good to see you. It's so good to have you back here on the show for like third, fourth time. I don't even remember, but it's so good to see you, man. It feels great, Ryan. So it's my lesson. Only go on podcasts with people I really like.

Oh, that means a lot to me. And I've mentioned it before, but the trip I got to take with you and the students you teach at Yale to Gettysburg was one of the most transformational moments of my life. I retell it over and over and over the care that you put into that trip and the guest you brought, the special forces guys from. Britain and America and the going from place to place. It was just one of the best trips ever, man. And so I just, again, want to publicly say thank you for that trip to Gettysburg. That's a great time. We still do it every year with our class. You need to come again. I'm going to probably take you up on that offer because it was so much fun. But to get a start to stay, and I want to take us back in time a bit. Okay. And let's go back to the summer of

1965, okay? I believe you were 10 years old, and it was weeks before your father deployed to Vietnam for another tour of combat. And I think they took you, your parents took you and your five siblings to look out Mountain Tennessee where your mom was raised. And there your aunt Margaret told you the story of another family member, Commander Thomas Callaway Latimore. I love it, Stan, if you would tell us more about this story. of Commander Thomas Calloway-Ladamore and what you learned from it. Yeah, this was up on Lookout Mountain where my mother's family lived

and there was big old houses. And my aunt Margaret was this wonderful elderly lady and she walked me into the sort of the four year of the home and there was a black and white picture of Thomas Lattimore. And he was clearly much younger when the picture was made than he had been later in life. But she said he was a graduate of the Naval Academy class of 1914, and he had a career up until 1941. In fact, in 1941, he was commanding the USS

Dobbin, which was a destroyer tender, and it was stationed with the Pacific Fleet, which had been moved to Pearl Harbor. And so he is there stationed in Pearl Harbor, and he liked to go hiking. And so he would go out hiking. One time he came back and he was injured. In fact, so much he had have his arm in a cast for a while. And then in July of 1941, he goes out one morning hiking in comfortable shoes and khakis, Navy khakis, and he never returns. And later that day, his crew sends out a search party to where he'd gone, which was really just the ridges around Pearl Harbor, where he could look down, not particularly difficult terrain, but still ridges. And then when they couldn't find him, they had the local authorities go out. A search was put

and nothing was ever found of Commander Latimore. Well, a few months later, you remember, December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack. And now suddenly, Commander Latimore's disappearance becomes a story where they say he was obviously accosted by Japanese spies or military who'd come and killed or kidnapped. And, you know, there's no proof that that happened at all. But it became, it was so time just a few months before that. that there's no way they wouldn't come up with a story like that. And it really was intriguing to me because I was 10.

My father was about to go off to war. I was fascinated in things military. And now we have this World War II related mystery in the family. Wow. And again, going back in time a little bit, I love this story, is when you graduated from West Point, I learned this new from reading a book that, the person who handed you your diploma at West Point was General George Patton's son, which was General George Smith Patton.

And I read that you had a thought to yourself at that moment and you wondered what kind of leader you wanted to be. And I think what you said you came up with at the time was a good one. And so I'm curious, like the fundamental question now I have to ask you Stan is what do good leaders do? Yeah, and I could never have answered that question then. Remember, I was at West Point for four years surrounded by statues of Robert E. Lee, well, actually pictures of Robert E. Lee, but statues of Patton, Eisenhower, MacArthur, all these icons of American military history. So you can't help but compare yourself to that standard every day. I lived in Lee Barracks, named after Robert E. Lee. And so my first hope was that I would be a good leader, but in those days, I would have said, that was now I would say effective leader because I since learned that you are effective or ineffective. But that's separate from between morally good and bad. Adolf Hitler was an effective leader, but he was morally bankrupt. Nowadays, I would say what I wanted to be really was an effective leader who people wanted to follow.

But I also wanted to be a good leader in that somebody who should follow. but I didn't draw that distinction in those days. What about as you progressed and you get promotion after promotion after promotion until now you're leading 150,000 or more people from a wide variety of territories? You're at war, right? You're having to come up with a completely new strategy. How had your definition of effective leadership evolved over time? Yeah, this is important because I think I'm probably pretty,

standard. The first few years, it was to be competent, tactically competent, technically competent, respected for that, be able to tell a company of paratroopers to do something and they would do it. Later, as you evolve, you start to realize that your role is not exactly that. Your role is to create an environment in which other younger leaders develop with they're able to use their initiative, their innovation, their judgment, all of those things. So instead of having the power to move forces on a map, which you have, the real power is in shaping how people think and how they behave and hopefully in a positive way. And in taking care of them in that process and teaching them that ultimately that's the leader's responsibility as well. It's not just accomplishing the mission.

It is taking care of the people that they are entrusted with. And so when you are more senior leader, when you're young, I remember watching a general appear once in a field exercise I was on. And I'd wandered out of the bushes with a sergeant in my platoon. I was a second lieutenant. And it's cold and our noses are running and we look like the dog's breakfast. And the general's Jeep is there. And, you know, I was, of course, deeply envious if anybody had a Jeep because I was walking. And then the general's driver looked perfect.

He was a sergeant. And the general's Jeep looked perfect. And then the general came out of this tent to get in his Jeep. And he looked perfect. And I thought, wow, that would be nice. He's just come out of a tent, probably got good food to eat. His nose isn't running. You know, I would like to be that.

And then when you become that, that's not what you want to be. When you come that, you wish your nose was running. You wish you were next to Sergeant Smith. and you were walking out of the woods and you wish that your life was pretty straightforward and simple as it had been when you were a junior officer. One of the things you were known for,

Stan, that I know when you served with your team was a consultant might say a frontline obsession, but I think that works in military terms that you were known for being out in the field with your soldiers. And that wasn't a normal thing for a four-star general. can you talk more about maybe how that relates to what you learned being on the front lines with your teams, with your soldiers, a place where most four-star generals don't go, as well as how that

translates now to the, because you work with a lot of businesses, you're on boards, you're helping companies create effective leaders. Can you take it from there and see how that translates into the business world? Yeah, I'll take it on several levels. When I commanded the counterterrorist forces of Joint Special Operations Command, they would go out from our, we had bases all over Iraq and Afghanistan. They would launch from those bases, usually by helicopter, sometimes by vehicle, and go on raids after enemy leaders. And so you go along on those missions for several reasons. You'll go along first because you have to see how missions are being done.

You have to have a sense of what's actually happening on the ground. If you just get reports, you get this two-dimensional version. And we had predator, unmanned area of vehicles above. So actually, I could sit in the headquarters and watch it on full motion video. But I quickly learned that's not real. You're seeing a real picture, but you don't know what's happening. So you've got to go. And you go on the ground and you get a sense of what's hard, what isn't hard,

where they're having problems where they're really good. And then the other reason you go is because they need to see you go. They need to know that you're willing to accept cold and dark and some danger. And it's funny because the general coming along isn't any help to them. In fact, I'm actually a danger to them. And they're always worried I'm going to get killed on their watch and they're going to be blamed for losing the general.

So they're always kind of looking over the shoulder. But the reality is they appreciate you going because you make that gesture. They say, if I'm asking you to do that, I've got to be willing to do that. And, of course, the final reason you go is because the years when you were a lieutenant whose nose ran, those are things that really create your self-identity, how you think of yourself. And if you're just sitting back in the headquarters, drinking coffee, you start to not respect yourself like you want to. You have this idea of self-image. And so you've got to go out there with regularity to remind yourself that this is what you are and what you do.

When you work with leaders in the business world now, whether it's with the McChrystal Group, your business or sitting on boards and you're brought in to help their teams become more effective, especially their leaders become more effective. How do you take that frontline obsession? And what do you coach them up on? Yeah, one of the first things is you've got to give them an obsession to get up close to the people who actually do the job. Early in the pandemic, I had a fascinating call from a friend of mine who we'd worked with, who was the CEO of Advanced Auto Parts.

And he calls me and he says, Stan, I need your advice. And I said, okay, you really don't. I don't sure you really need advice. You're really good. But he goes, my board of directors will not let me go visit our stores because they don't want me to get COVID because I'm valuable, but also they don't want me to spread COVID.

And he said that is absolutely in contradiction to what I've always done because I go out and I motivate people, particularly at a time when those stores have got to operate because people need auto parts. So I'm asking my frontline people to accept some risk and to work hard, and I can't go and even share that with them. And he said, how do I handle this? And I said, well, you know, the board's got a point, and they are the board.

The best you can do is be very honest with your team. Tell them exactly the truth. Communicate with complete candor, and they will respect that. And as soon as you can go back at, of course, do that. But, you know, the good leaders I see just have this absolute conviction that this is part of their job, part of their role. And so you don't have to tell them to do it more. You sometimes have to remind them that other people can handle an awful lot of things that happen in the office. I remember Sandha, the first manager of my dad told me he ever worked for one of the best. And he said,

And right after they had their first team meeting, they had like the paper calendars at this time. He opened it up for the next four weeks. He turned it around and he handed it to each person. He's like, tell me when I'm riding with you. Tell me what I'm riding with you. And he's like, I always remember that. I knew that I had to be with my people. I share that because I think it's cool.

But also now the world is a little bit different. It's changed. We have a hybrid model. We have some people meeting with people, just like you and I talked about our keynote speaking engagement. Some are a go. Some are not. Some are virtual, some are canceled.

For the person who's saying, that's great. And I love being with my people. But the world's changed a little bit. We sell virtually now or we don't meet with people nearly as much. And I'm not sure if we're going to meet with people nearly as much. What advice to you, because I know you've been working with businesses, with governments, with teams over the past year since the world has shifted a bit. What advice do you give to them for those who are working in a much more hybrid slash virtual world?

Yeah, I would say be intentional. And what I mean by that is leverage technology because you can do a lot more things more efficiently than ever. You skip some of the long travel for a single hour meeting and things like that. And you can reach more people on short notice. So use that. But at the same time, understand what you are not doing. Understand that in some cases you're using muscle that you built up when you built personal relationships, when people saw you around, when you had. interactions. And so be intentional about trying to create those things which build long-term relationships. Obviously, we're all going to end up in some kind of a hybrid. But the key is not to get lazy, not to stay. Well, I like working in my pajama bottoms and I've got a good excuse for doing that, so I'll just do it this way. Understand that when you're young, you need to see senior people in the flesh. You need to have somebody put their hand on your shoulder. You know that people learn most from their peers. And so you're going to have to create, intentionally create times when that can happen and balance that with the other opportunities that digitization offers.

And I do think from a human perspective, I recently had a leadership retreat for a smaller group of leadership circle members, Stan, and I'll tell you, I mean, people were loving it. I mean, so ready to be together. So it's obvious like we are, even the introverts, We are social creatures. So even if it is a virtual slash hybrid world, I think these, whether they're compass retreats, as Insight Global might call them or anything you'd call the off-sites getting together,

I just don't see any way that those go away. I think those have to be a part of your long-term plan to be with people in person together. I actually think they need to increase now because you've got to make up some lost ground. And, you know, companies whenever resources are tight, they cut things like that because they say that's fun to do. It's not important. I would argue the opposite. I'm with you. I think they're the mandatory when building out of budget, that would be increased, especially because you may be saving somewhere else on other types of travel. Stan, I'm going to talk about risk. It's the title of your next book. And I found this, this, it's interesting that when I was reading about why you wanted to be a soldier.

and it involved risk. And you said, I quote, I chose a soldier's life for many reasons, one of which was the desire to perceive myself as a courageous risk taker. I liked the idea of taking risk that others would not. Can you share more about your desire to do what others weren't willing to do and why that is at least probably partially why you became a soldier? Sure. I think it has a lot to do with self-image.

I grew up in the late 50s and through the 60s. And of course, I watched television programs about cowboys and heroes and things like that. And, you know, part of you wants to be that. And then my father was a soldier. When I was young, he went to Vietnam twice. And so I had a perception that people who are doing what they should do are accepting risk on behalf of others. You are protecting others. You are taking this responsible role.

And that felt good. that idea that I'd be willing to do that, you know, really reinforced what I wanted for a self-image. And we've spoken before about, though, you go to West Point and it wasn't a smooth ride. In fact, you almost got kicked out. Did you question yourself? Did you question becoming a soldier during that time? No, it's interesting. I question West Point.

First, now I would argue I was a risk taker, and I took a bunch of risks up there, and I lost too, too often. I almost got thrown out for demerits because I got caught doing things I shouldn't have been doing. But it was interesting. I rationalized at that time that there's a difference between being a cadet at West Point and being a soldier out in combat. And that West Point was a Mickey Mouse collection of foolish rules, and combat was the real world. And so all I had to do was get beyond this thing and get out to that thing. Over time, I learned that West Point was sort of hammering things into me that were really important for when you got out in combat. There were discipline.

There was values and whatnot. But in the moment, they were a distraction. And I think I distracted them a little bit as well. Wasn't it really hard, though? I mean, I've never done it. I got recruited to potentially go there. And I was like, I don't want to do that. I just want to play football.

I, I'm, wasn't it hard? Well, I made it hard. You know, I, I, I did things that were boneheaded and I did them repeatedly. Like what, what did you do? Well, my, I got what they call a slug, a major thing. While I was still in B. Sparix that first summer, nobody gets slugged in Bsparricks, but I got slugged for disapprobation towards a cadet superior.

I didn't even know what that meant. It's disrespect. And so what had happened is this senior had caught my roommate and I talk him when we shouldn't have been in the hallway. And he jacked us up. And then he walked away. And as he walked away, he did this tricky thing. He went back and did a circle back through this bathroom in the center. And when he walked away, we basically did one of these like this.

And he got behind us just in time to see it. And so that was my first slug. And then the next two were drinking alcohol when I shouldn't have and drinking way too much. And then the last one was in checking live real weapons out of the museum and attacking the social. It's called Grant Hall. It's where upperclassmen meet their dates. And we attacked it with, we didn't have ammunition, but we had real machine guns and rolled up socks for hand grenades. And so we attacked Grand Hall.

and you know that was almost the straw that broke the camel's back had i gotten a more severe write-up how they recorded that that night i'd have been thrown out but the officer on duty thought it was humorous and so he wrote it up in a way where the punishment because it's all how you pick the words for the punishment how he recorded the offense it kept me under and and i survived uh well one of the guys one of the the the men's mentors you talk about. And I think we could go for an hour just on mentors alone. But I actually want to pick a specific quote from one of your mentors and expand on it. This is a major John Vines. I think you said that this is a guy that has been a mentor for a long time and still is to this day,

an Army officer with a thick Southern accent. I think this is about ownership. Because I think this could apply to the business world as well. He said, if there are three people responsible for feeding the dog, the dog is going to starve. Can you share more like why that's so useful both in the world of having a dog, but also taking that into the business world of ownership and accountability? Yeah. I met General Vines when he was a captain and this thick, he used to play football for Bear Bryant at Alabama. And he was an intimidating character, but he had this ability to sum up things so well. And one time he described that, and he captures it perfectly, because the reality is if you don't make clarity for somebody being responsible, then after the

fact, everybody says, well, I thought you were going to do it, or you rationalize, you don't have to do it. It's like walking by trash on the street. You walk by trash on the street, and you say, somebody else gets paid to pick this up, so I don't need to. Well, it's your street, too. You know, And so it applies at the personal level, it applies at the society level. And so I think how we think about responsibility is really important. And I think also I think Amazon calls this single threaded leadership. Jeff Bezos will ask in a meeting if there's confusion, he'll say something like, well, who is the single threaded leader?

Meaning who owns this? Who owns this project, this priority? And that is an imperative question. I think this is really important in the world of leadership and the world of business, especially if you're a leader leading leaders. So maybe you can shift that the dog's not going to be fed if you tell three people to do it type leadership mantra for people who are leading leaders in the business world.

Yeah. General Vange used also say, tell me whose throat I should choke if this doesn't go well. And so who is responsible? But it's, I think one of the things you have to do is communicate to an organization. All right. what are we trying to do? What's the outcome we seek? Who do we have responsible for different parts of it?

And then have we given them the resources? It's not just a case of, you know, making them the potential scapegoat if it doesn't go well or the person to blame. It's saying who needs the support of other people because they are responsible for the outcome. And so if somebody's given a task, they ought to then be able to look to their left and right up and down and find other people who support they need. And if they ask for it, there is a responsibility on others to support because that person possesses sort of sacred responsibility there. And I think if you communicate that clearly in an organization, it can be very, very helpful. Yeah, it comes back to vividly clear communication to ensure everybody is on the same page. It's obviously a critical component to leadership.

Risk, you're right, in reality is neither mathematical nor finite. It's impact-dependence. to a great extent on how we perceive, process, and respond. And you also write a healthy risk immune system successfully executes four imperatives, detect, assess, respond, and learn. Can you share more about a healthy risk immune system? I can. I'm going to go back first to say, how do we think about risk? Most of us, if we're asked to define risk, we say, well, it's the product of the probability,

of something happening and the consequences if it does. If I go up on the roof, what's the likely that I'll fall off and how badly would I get hurt if I do? If the probability and consequences were low, we don't worry much about it. If the probability and consequences go up, we buy insurance, we do mitigating things because we take it seriously. I would ask you to think about risk a little different. Think of it like a mathematical equation. Threat times vulnerability equals risk. And then I'd say, if you've got a threat out there, but you can drive it to zero, you can make it go away, you have no risk because you've got nothing, anything times zero is zero. But you usually can't do that. Usually threats come. You can't be predicted exactly when they'll

come or what they'll be. So it's sort of a fool's errand to pretend we can. So then you go to vulnerability. That's really how much we can resist. how much we can deal with those risks. You do control that. So suddenly, if you can drive vulnerability to zero, suddenly your risk is zero. You probably can't, but you can drive vulnerability way down

through what we call the risk immune system. You know, every day, our bodies are assaulted by about 10,000 pathogens or other things that threaten us. And yet we don't think much about them. We go about our daily life because our human immune system is a miracle. It responds, assesses those threats, decides if they're dangerous,

deals with them, and then learns from it. That's the principle of vaccine. And so our human immune system just cranks along until it doesn't. And if we have autoimmune deficiency or another malady that undercuts it, then suddenly we become vulnerable to things that normally wouldn't bother us.

Now, organizations have almost the same thing. A risk immune system is a series of factors. If they're all working in a healthy fashion, you can fend off a tremendous number of threats, whether they are expected or something you've never seen before. And you can survive those that aren't, that you can't fend off completely, you're resilient to it. And those factors are pretty predictable. They're things like communication. Do you communicate effectively? Is your narrative in your organization? Is it define for everybody clearly. Do you have the ability to act when you need to act? Can you overcome inertia? Can you do things in the right time? Not too soon, not too late. Is the organizational

organization capable of adapting when it needs to? And finally, leadership, which makes all of this work. So it's it's almost like your human immune system. It's this capacity we have, but it's something we take for granted. And I would use, the example of COVID-19. I think COVID-19 had our society and our risk immune system malfunctioned. And there was, can you maybe explain the crimson contagion, which I learned from reading in your book and how that relates to our response to COVID-19? Yeah, poorly.

You know, we've had pandemics threaten us, you know, regularly throughout history. Even in the last century, we've had a number of potential pandemics, but the most, well known as 1918 that called the Spanish flu. In 2019, Department of Health and Human Services ran a series of exercises called Crimson Contagent. And it was based on a scenario of an American traveler, goes to China, flies back to Chicago, and he carries a viral infection. And first infects his son who is going off to a rock concert, and then it starts going around. And eventually about half a million Americans die. And it was an exercise designed to find out what the shortcomings were in America's preparedness for a pandemic and then exercise the interaction between the various

agencies that have responsibilities. And it came across with a pretty dim view of where we were. And we were still judged to be the best in the world. Just a few months after, that very illuminating exercise was completed and there was after action important lessons learned and essentially nothing done about them. COVID-19 arises and we dropped the ball just as badly, but this time for real. And what you advised and worked with some state and local governments at the time as well as other businesses, what are what did we mess up if you had to had a redo and you were in charge, which you've been in charge of huge organizations, huge teams before. What would you have done differently?

Yeah, I'd start by Ryan saying, this was the best enemy any society could ever have. Nobody could ever have any sympathy or love for COVID-19. It's an inanimate thing. And it also basically threatens all societies as the same. It's like having Martians come down and a movie made about how the world unites. Independence Day, yeah. Well, there you go. And so you've got a situation where you've got an enemy you love to hate, but also an enemy we know is coming because pandemics come with regularity. We don't know the

exact version of the coronavirus, but the reality is it's not novel. It's not new. The second is we know what to do about it. We have great experience in public health, so we know what steps to take and what resources we need. And then finally, we get this medical miracle. science pulls out vaccines in record time. And so if you line those three factors up together, you know the threats coming, you know what to do about it, and you get this incredible Manhattan Project miracle, and you still can't deal with it. You have to look inside to what went wrong. The first thing went wrong is we didn't screw it up medically or scientifically. We screwed it up societally. We didn't fight COVID-19 as a nation. We fought it as 50 states separately,

where I would argue we fought it actually as many separate communities. And no state or community as the resources to fend this off together. And of course, across the world, we fought it as independent nations and whatnot, not unified. The second is we didn't communicate effectively from the beginning. We started sending confusing messages to people. Our narrative at the national level was badly flawed. One day we'd say this is very important, and this next day we'd say it's going to go away very quickly. We'll be roaring back by April.

And so we confused the people who had to execute. We operated way more slowly, politically, in many cases, than we needed to. And that the nature of a pandemic is exponential growth. And the key thing about exponential growth is you have to act before the exponential growth occurs, which means you've got to take difficult steps politically before the population sees the absolute requirement for it. It's like letting the fire get out of control before you do anything. You'll never stop it. And so leaders have got to be willing to make those decisions early.

And that's reinforced by the experts and whatnot. So on a whole bunch of levels, we just failed in our risk immune system to do the fundamentals well. And we pay. Yeah. Well, still in there right now. I think in the business world, I think of the exercise that one of my great bosses, Dustin Tim, she told me that when she would gather our leadership team back when I worked for her and say, you know, let's think about how we can put ourselves out.

of business. What could happen? What could, what could do? If they hired new people that took all of our jobs, what would they think? What would they do? If we were our competitors, how would we put us out of business? And I think that's kind of an element of risk, too, of not being paranoid, and maybe a little productive paranoia, as Jim Collins would say, but in a way, it was always preparing us to be thinking like that. And to me, I always felt kind of safe with her as my boss, too, because she was always thinking, how could we reinvent ourselves? What's coming next? How can we make sure, while we still had our fundamentals, but how are we making sure we're looking forward to be prepared for whatever may come? Technology, different things that could change in the marketplace. So Stan,

if you would take kind of what you've learned from seeing how we've responded to that in the COVID world, to the business world, what do you think are some things some leaders here can do for their teams thinking about, I want to make sure that we're kind of always prepared as well as ahead of the game instead of being caught on our heels of saying, oh, it's too late. Yeah, there are a number of things. And we outlined some of them in the book, and I'll describe one. Watch CNBC tomorrow morning. And they will invariably have a CEO wall in Alaska.

Well, what about your strategy to do X? And that CEO will be confident. And they will sell the plan. And that's what they should do. same with a general. You give a general a mission and you say, can you accomplish this mission? And then you bring him to testify and you say,

can you accomplish it? That general is going to say, yes, I can for two reasons. One, because they have to believe, that's a psychological thing. If you're going to do something hard, you have to believe you could do it. And if you communicate,

if you go up in front of people at that CAO tomorrow morning gets on CNBC and goes, well, our strategy is kind of eppy. I don't know. He's going to have a retention problem. Yeah. And so it's necessary to believe. Now, there's great confidence in that. Organizations can do things that people think are impossible because they believe.

Now, the problem with that is when you believe you can start to get blind. You start to believe and you start not to pay attention to the risks. One of the things that we outlined in the book is the use of something called red teaming. And that is designating a group of people who are slightly outside your own. organization to come figure out how to screw you up. What could they do to undercut your strategy to make it fail? And if you get devious people who are thoughtful, what will happen is they will pressure test your strategy and they will find the holds in it. And sometimes it's very irksome. It can be irritating. It can be irksome. There's a famous millennium challenge

exercise the military ran before the invasion of Iraq. And a Marine general was asked to play the red team. And he destroyed the U.S. forces really right at the beginning of the game. And the U.S. military got angry and stopped and restarted the game and said, no, we're going to start over and you can't do that. But in reality, if we're mature enough to let those gaps and holes be identified and act on them, we can make our plans so much better. And so sometimes having the maturity to let somebody do that kind of pressure test can be really key.

Yeah, it's just like having for your own career and decision making process, like having your mentor, board of advisors or your kitchen cabinet or whatever, your who, the people that you surround yourself with, that they know that you really value honest, candid, real feedback. back when you're working to make a decision so that you have those go-to people that aren't just going to just not say, sounds good, general. Yep, let's go. No, you actually value the people who are thoughtful enough, have the guts, have the courage, the competence to speak up and respond to say, actually, Ryan, that is not right. Here's why. Here are some of the holes, right? By the way,

I don't know if anyone has seen this TV show, but it's one of my all-time favorites written by Aaron Sorkin called The Newsroom. And, there is a multiple episodes, I believe in season two, all about red teaming. And I think red team is a great idea in the business world. Certainly, Stan, you talk about it in the military world, but a great way to think about having a red team for your life, a red team for your business, a red team, those people who are willing and able and competent enough to tell you that's, no, I think we need to rethink that. Yeah. I mean, I've been married for 45 years, so I got to live in red team. She tells me, I'm wrong.

stupid. I, I, since you were too fast, Stan, you were at the very front as we're jogging to or kind of running to Gettysburg from the hotel to the battlefield. It's like a mile maybe. I don't remember exactly. I was actually running with your wife and she was delightful. It was so awesome. Obviously, obviously, that's who I could keep up with. Obviously, you've very extremely well, extremely well. I want to one more question before I open it up and I'm going to go to Bronwyn first. So just to give you a heads up.

I, when you took command of the second Ranger Battalion, you met with the leaders of the unit. You're right. And you established foundational skills. And I think this translates really well to the business world, but we'll talk about it from the military

perspective and then maybe the translation. The foundational skills and you call them the big four. I think having names and numbers are really useful. And these big four that you said were the foundational skills for our battalion, physical conditioning, marksmanship, medical skills, small unit drills. General, can you talk about as the leader when you take over a team, the importance of foundational skills and almost even the marketing of that as you named them the big four and why those are so vital for you to progress? Yeah. And I'm going to start, Ryan, by saying that the Army, bless its whole,

heart, assigns required training by hours. And so there was this big book, an army training manual, and it would say every soldier has to get three hours of this training a year. It's got to get 12 hours of this and whatever. Somebody went through and added up all the required training, and it was more than a year. And so by definition, you couldn't do it. And it wasn't basic combat training. It was all this other foolishness. And so you had to be willing to not do things that you were directed to do. And that's where a leader jumps in. What I did, and my sergeant major with me, we said we've got the big four, the four key things that we thought, if we were good enough at those four, we would win in combat. And all the other things are nice

to do because we had to be, it's like blocking and tackling it, whatever you want to describe it. And I was taking off the backs of all those subordinate leaders that responsibility to make the choice. between doing this required training. And you're right, by calling it the big four and saying it over and over again, at a certain point, I started having young private saying, you know, sir, what we do in this unit, we do the big four, as though they'd thought about it or they'd come up with it. And it made it clear for them. Now, we did some other things as well, but it was a clarity of focus that an organization

really needs. I think that last phrase makes a lot of sense, like building a clarity of focus as a leader. That's one of our jobs because we want to be able to have them repeat back to us. What are we focusing on? What do we care about? Why are we doing this? That's what's really important. Stan, I want to open it up here.

Ron, when you want to go first, I know she's got a good question for you. Yes. First off, thank you so much. This has been absolutely incredible general. So I've been taking notes every year. Tell me, Stan, please. So this question is actually from my good friend and client who's also on the call, Amanda Estes. She is the director of reliability engineering over at Coles.

So her question is, how do you get a group of people with lots of other priorities to take steps to mitigate a high risk item before it becomes a crisis? Yeah, it is hard and you've got to do several things. The first is assign responsibility because if you put a group of people together and you say, you are to respond to this problem, but nobody feels like that they are, truly accountable for the outcome if that thing happens, then everybody's going to show up to the meeting and they're going to nod and they're going to be less engaged. So you've really got to assign some responsibility, accountability for solving that problem. The second is you've got to make

a very clear case on what level of preparation you're looking for. You know, is this going to be serious? Are we actually going to prepare so that we can either prevent it or mitigate the affects what it happens, or is this a gesture? You know, a lot of organizations are guilty of saying, I'm going to have a group of people look at that problem and they sort of check the block. You know, we looked at that problem. They didn't really do anything. And it becomes very evident to the group that they assigned to do that, that they were going to, because they're not willing to put resources. And so you got to, you got to be clear to people. Are you just identifying it or when you're trying to create a serious response to it beforehand.

And then you've got to stay on it. Senior leaders can assign things, but if senior leaders don't signal that it is important to them, people will respond accordingly. So senior leaders have got set up briefings to they get the response to what happened. You know, if senior leaders assign it and never follow up, that'll happen about twice before the organization learns

these things aren't serious and they'll give them the amount of focus that that means. That stand that reminds me of the say, do gap. Can you describe the problems with the say, do gap? Yeah, I mean, what you say is important and what you actually do. How many times have you known leaders who say, we're going to do this way, we're going to behave this way, I'm going to do it, and then you see them personally doing different. In the book, we outlined the problem Google ran into. They adopted the slogan, do no evil, which was pretty straightforward, and it was pretty catchy.

But then members of the organization in Google perceived that their contracts with U.S. Department of Defense violated that. And so you had a gap between what Google says its values were and what those members of the team perceived was actually happening. You get cynicism when that happens. a gap you get cynicism you get resistance so you have to try to avoid those but if they do arise and they will periodically you've got to address them yeah a few other questions i got i'm just going to read them off uh for you one one of them is about imposter syndrome and this is something i definitely deal with and i wonder how it is for a a military leader i was reading uh president Barack Obama's book a promised land because he writes about you a good amount in that book and you guys uh

your relationship is well documented. He says some extremely kind things, as well as he describes in detail the day when you resigned. But when it comes to imposter syndrome, I feel like a military leader, it's almost like you have to act like that's not a thing. And I don't know, like, but is that a thing within, as you get promoted and all of a sudden,

you look around like, oh my goodness, the president of the United States just put me in charge of 150,000, thousand plus people and it's on me. Is that, do you even, is imposter syndrome a thing or if so, how do you overcome that? Well, it was with me. And I think it is with most, although we all try to pretend that it's not. I think I describe your people, the first time you go in the Oval Office, you go in and

you're fairly senior. You wouldn't be in there for a meeting. But there are, but not the president, but other people around the president all try to act nonchalant. Like they're in the office every day. This is where we watch TV. We put our feet up on the coffee table. And it's an act. Everybody's trying to convince you that you're the rhubarb, you're whatnot, and they're the old hands. I would say that you really got to fight imposter syndrome because it's a crisis of confidence. And sometimes it can make you less effective than you actually are. Because you sit there and you see it and you wonder, wow, should I even be in this

room is my opinion worthy. And you got to step back and say, what do I know and what's my responsibility? Now, you can't start thinking, I know everything. And I'm a cool person and that's why I'm here. You got to, you know, that's a clear balance. But you got to do your job. There are times when you have to play the part that's been assigned to you. And if that means dealing with heads of state and dealing with them in a very direct way, I mean the first time I told up ahead of state to stuff it. You know, I never thought I'd do that. And I ended doing up several times, but the first time was shocking because I did that.

And then I said it in very rude terms. And then I sat back and said, wow, did I just do that? You know, am I going to go to jail or something? But sometimes that's appropriate. So I guess you have to remind yourself, you got to roll and you got to step up to it. Yeah, he mentioned the first interaction in the Oval Office with you. he said, McChrystal's whole manner

was that of someone who's burned away frivolity and distractions from his life. With me, at least, that included small talk. During our conversation,

it was mostly, yes, sir, no, sir, and I'm confident we can get the job done. He writes, I was sold. And do you remember that moment?

Like, when, like, what were you, like, were you sweating? Were you nervous? Were you like, hey, I belong? Yes, sir.

No, sir. I'm confident. We can get the job done. Like, what was that like? Yeah, I wasn't particularly nervous that time because I'd been told by this secretary of defense. I was going to Afghanistan. You know, I'd spend time there before.

I was thinking more about the mission than I was about that meeting because it was pretty brief. Here's where I screwed it up, though. I went into that meeting and what I should have done is I should have said, Mr. President, what do you want me to do in Afghanistan? And if you will tell me, I will do it or I will do my best to do it. we didn't have that conversation. He just said, can you do the mission? And I said, yeah, I can do my best.

But I should have said, explain to me what that is. And I should have asked him to write it in his own handwriting on a piece of paper with a pencil. And I say that because if he hasn't thought through it enough to be able to do that, he should think more. And I need that kind of clarity. But I didn't have the, I wasn't thoughtful enough in the moment to ask for it. You know, it's my fault, not his. that is and it shouldn't have been something written by his staff saying yeah do it it's an

nx3 of what we passed it should be in his handwriting straight eyeball to eyeball so that there's real communication that that would have taken some massive guts like because i feel like their knowledge base i have no idea what i'm talking about but their knowledge base i feel like has to be super wide not necessarily that deep so would you expect that to be an answer of depth if if you would have actually asked that question it's great question and it would be it would have seemed maybe impertinent it would not have been intended to be but if you think about it he's sending me off to command a war which is a pretty serious thing yeah and so if the commander-in-chief doesn't have a clear vision of what he wants that general

to accomplish we ought to stop and align until we do have that clear i should not have deployed to afghanistan until he could write that and i understood it interesting uh One of the questions is about uncertainty and leadership, and that is how can you inspire and motivate a group of individuals to run towards a goal? And maybe Afghanistan even comes into play. I don't know. I don't know enough about it. Obviously, you do. But to run towards a goal, even when maybe the distance is unknown, like how do you motivate people to do something like that? Yeah. It is maybe the hard. leadership challenge there is. The next hardest is or maybe even harder is have them try to do

something that is clearly impossible. They know they cannot accomplish it. And yet you're asking them to do it. At this point, what you're really doing is you're asking an organization to have faith in several things. You're asking them to have faith in them being a part of the organization. You're asking them to have faith in you as a leader, that you are competent and you are going to do things that you're going to make reasonable decisions and issue reasonable orders and faith in each other. And that's why they go forward. That's why the soldiers do it. They often can't really calculate whether the mission is doable, how hard it, because they don't have enough information go in. So you're asking them to take essentially a faith-based approach, and I say faith in a number of things,

into that. And you've got to build that up over time by your demonstrated performance and interaction with them. It's when you don't have that trust built up that asking people to do things like that is really problematic. Yeah, I think that kind of seeing around corners as well as making those asks take time and sometimes proof of performance in order to build up credibility and we don't always have that as a newer leader sometimes that's that's not always the case uh stanne i one more question um that i'm curious about and we've talked about this before but sometimes your mind changes and evolves especially a guy like you who is always reading and writing and clarifying your thinking when you analyze over the course of your career working with

all these special forces warriors like chris fussel and many others from all over the world What do you think the commonalities are among leaders who sustain excellence? Yeah. I think there are some things that should be very flexible and some things that should not. The older I get, the longer I'm around, the more I believe your basic values, what you represent should be less and less flexible. Now, I'm not saying judgmental, but I'm saying you need to know who you are. What is your view of integrity?

What is your view of different things? are key to that, relationships and whatnot, because those become a mooring that you basically connect yourself to. And without those, you will drift. On the other things, it's interesting, you can become more and more opinionated about what's the right technique to do this or what does doctrine say or whatever. And I think that's a mistake. I actually think on that part of your decision-making process, you should be more and more flexible. You ought to say, here is the problem, how many ways can it be solved, and what am I not thinking about? Am I open to others? But that's opposite to what human nature in my experience is, because in human nature, we go

through a bunch of experiences and we start to believe that for this situation, this is the right response, for this situation, that allows us to make quick decisions. But it boxes us in. it starts to make us do what we've done before. I mean, in some very insignificant things, that probably doesn't matter. But it gives us these templates, which is valuable as they are also very risky because we start to run that same play

because we won the game with it last week, forgetting that this is an entirely different opponent. Yeah, I love it. I want to pause for a second and say, if you have a question, I can unmute you. We have just a few minutes to go. Steve, I was pointing to you. I see your background.

I don't know if you served, but I thought maybe you would want to go next. If somebody else wants to, you can type in the chat. I appreciate that, Ryan. I really have no questions. This has been very enlightening. And I hope this continues. Thank you. Of course, absolutely.

And yes, I am a veteran. Oh, you are? Where in wind? What did you do? 74 to 80. Thank you. I was in Germany. Thanks for doing that, Steve.

Thank you for your service. Thank you. Awesome. Awesome. Well, the latest book, so first of all, just to everybody, whether it's team of teams or leaders or the books that General McChrystal writes are, they're transformational books. And what I mean by that is they're life-changing books. I highly, highly recommend them.

That's obviously why I reached out to Stan. I'm super grateful to Stan wrote the forwards. My first book, Welcome to Manage. which still blows my mind. And I'm very grateful. But the latest one, which I highly recommend, it's called Risk, a user's guide. I encourage everyone to get it, to read it.

It's really well done, not surprising. And I'm just grateful, General McChrystal, for you, your friendship, and certainly would love, and I know we will, to continue our dialogue as we both progress. I look forward to it, Ryan, and I appreciate the time. Thank you. And I'll definitely would love to talk with you and Chris. on your show.

It's going to happen. Within the next few months, let's make it happen. Absolutely. All right. Thank you. Thank you, sir. All right. Thanks, everybody.

Good to see you. All righty. I am so grateful for General Stanley of Crystal. He's been so kind and curious and thoughtful and giving and always up for a conversation about how to become a more effective leader. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. a few of my takeaways after reviewing my notes. Quote, if there are three people responsible for feeding the dog, the dog is going to starve.

As a leader, I think we need to be clear on who is responsible. As I mentioned, the single-threaded leadership from the books I've read about Jeff Bezos and Amazon, but who is responsible and hold them accountable and give ownership? And then when taking command of the second Ranger battalion, Stan established the big four, the foundational skills necessary to do excellent work. And so I'd ask you, what are your big four, your version of it? Have you established them with your team? And if you haven't, I think it's something you should probably do right now. And then the conversation around a front line obsession, this is something that Stan will.

was known for on the battlefield. And I'd ask you, how are you doing this for your team? Especially now in a new hybrid work environment. It's critical that your team sees and knows that you care deeply about them and what they're doing and that you're close to the action. I want to say once again, thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with the legendary general Stanley McChrystal.

He'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and continue to write reviews on Apple Podcast and rate the show five stars, hopefully, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much.

Talk you soon. Can we?